Has anyone baught and used a NASA AIS Radar

[WayneS]

There has been a lot of recent discussion regarding the name of NASA's device and the merits of AIS in general which does not actually tell us a lot about how well it actually works.

Has anyone got one and been able to compare the real situation with what is displayed. Are a lot more vessels visible to the eye than displayed and or, are vessels/data mis-displayed.

This is not a trawl to find out the positive or negative points of NASA's device, but more an AIS in general Q.

I too have looked at the AISLive website but unless you can also look out of the window at the same piece of water you have no way of knowing how accurate it is.

And btw, how big is a 300 ton vessel? Is it frigate size, patrol boat size or what.

Cheers

W

 

[steverow]

Yes I bought one at LIBS from TCS Chandlery. £199.
Installed it temporarily on the boat using one of the existing VHF radio antennae.
Within quite short order it was showing me about a dozen ships in range in the Bristol Channel.
I cant decide however, whether to go for the NASA AIS engine, which will display AIS targets on the laptop plotter.
Seaclear (my back up system) has just been enabled with AIS capability..and it's free.
Dunno, maybe Ill have both and put the fixed unit on the flybridge.
Great little tool.

Steve.

 

[trouville]

Does that meen we have to deinstall seaclear and reinstall the new version or just install the new over old to see ships radar transmitions??

 

[wiggy]

just down load new seaclear and create paths for charts in new chart cal and hey presto

 

[trouville]

Ok ill try that!

 

[david_bagshaw]

you don't see [ QUOTE ]
... ships radar transmissions??

[/ QUOTE ] only decodes from a special VHF transmission from ships fitted with ais equipment which gives its position,mmsi number, its speed & direction amongst other items, definitely what is not viewable is its radar picture, or some method of knowing where radar transmissions are coming from.